An Egg Beat Kylie Jenner on Instagram

Are you wondering what the “world record egg” account is after a cursory click around the Internet, and why it has “come for,” “fried,” or (our favorite) “beat” Kylie Jenner for the most liked post of all time? Fear not: We are here to navigate the depths of social media’s strangest corridors with you, and this latest incident is certified farm fresh (sorry!).

The premise was simple: Beat Kylie Jenner for the number one most liked photo on the Instagram platform, a record she achieved last February when she announced the name of her first child, Stormi Webster. (In the picture, Stormi’s tiny hand clutched her mother’s millennial pink manicure.) Jenner got over 18 million likes for the photo.

On January 4, the egg was hatched. “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram,” read the caption on @world_record_egg’s one and only image, a photo of an egg. “Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)!” It also offered the solidarity hashtags #LikeTheEgg, #EggSoldiers, and #EggGang.

A week later, the egg has done it, with more than 32 million likes and counting. On its Instagram story, the egg promised an @world_record_egg merch line and shut down a few copycat accounts, including world record–attempting accounts for a pizza, a chicken, a potato, and more.

Not to be outdone by a dairy product (though she definitely was outdone by a dairy product, at least on Instagram), Jenner, who has been lauded by Forbes as an entrepreneur for her $900 million beauty brand, posted on her Instagram story in response, violently cracking an egg and frying it on the streets of (likely) Calabasas. Her caption read, “Take that little egg,” though a post containing the “crack-back” only has more than 20 million views.

What are we to make of the egg-Jenner scramble? What does it mean that a lowly, maverick egg was able to beat the first family of social media so handily? For one, it shows how easy it is to tap a heart-shaped icon on one’s phone. For another, people love eggs! And finally, the attention economy is a scam based on requiring little to no labor from both producer and consumer despite commanding the most space, and therefore value, in our digital lives. As far as we know, the egg is not a Harvard PhD sociology study, but it very well could be: As a metaphor for the fragility of the influencer ecosystem, the egg has broken the Internet.